


Ink back to Blood

by in_a_different_box_to_you



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Childhood, Europe, Gen, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Parentlock, Poetry, Road Trips, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 00:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4241829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_a_different_box_to_you/pseuds/in_a_different_box_to_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dad keeps glancing at me. He’s upset because I don’t remember all these details or places we lived, as if I could somehow recall things that he has never revisited in conversation. It’s like four years of my life have been compiled and labelled ‘Time With Sherlock’ and placed in a box that is only being opened now. I am not even sure that Sherlock is legally my father or if he was just Dad’s boyfriend… friend… flatmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ink back to Blood

_Fourteenth of July, 2015_

 

I look over at Max, slumped in the passengers seat. His hand is doing some kind of dance along to his iPod, floating in the slipstream out of the window. He’s not wearing a jumper and there are goosebumps up his arms. There are several close shaves where a passing car comes close and he withdraws his arm just in time, glancing at me to check I wasn’t watching. He has yet to realise the extent of peripheral vision. I don’t say anything. Although the cars seem to pass close, they aren’t close enough to do him any harm. 

 

I don’t think he really understands where we’re going. For years now Sherlock has just been a name to Max, the signature at the end of scrawled letters that he stopped reading after he grew bored of the long words he couldn’t understand and the confusing scribbled diagrams. 

 

Earlier, Max showed some interest in the map, plotting the route down south with a biro and looking so engrossed that I tried not to wince at the defacement. His attention span has shortened since he started school. He’s started selecting information in a very Sherlockian manner - surprising, considering the lack of influence he (his father?) has had on his life. 

 

He absently stifles a yawn with his left hand. He’s tired, we both are. Last night was spent in a lay-by somewhere in Yorkshire, huddled in the uncomfortably small beds in the van, listening to the constant drone of cars on the motorway. “Dad?” His voice is slurred. We need to find somewhere for food before he crashes. 

 

“Yeah?”

 

“What time will we get there?”

 

“Eight-ish. Why?”

 

“Will we have to sleep in the van?”

 

“We’ve… Don’t you remember? We’ll go back to live in the bookshop for a while.” 

 

“What bookshop?”

 

“Maybe you were too young. We used to live with Sherlock above a secondhand book shop. You were five when we moved to Edinburgh.” I am surprised that such a large part of his life has been forgotten, especially since it passed so quickly for me.

 

Max looks doubtful but replaces his earphones and watches the cars pass by. Sometimes I wonder if he remembers his biological parents, but it never crossed my mind that he wouldn’t remember Sherlock and the life we had together. I’ve read about childhood amnesia. I always thought it to arise in adulthood, not five years after the time forgotten. I worry that in five years time, Max will no longer remember anything about this part of his life. 

 

*

 

Dad keeps glancing at me. He’s upset because I don’t remember all these details or places we lived, as if I could somehow recall things that he has never revisited in conversation. It’s like four years of my life have been compiled and labelled ‘Time With Sherlock’ and placed in a box that is only being opened now. I am not even sure that Sherlock is legally my father or if he was just Dad’s boyfriend… friend… flatmate. 

 

I have one memory of before we moved to Edinburgh. I am lying on a warm chest, hiccupping in the aftermath of tears. There’s a voice rumbling against my forehead, reading me something from a beige covered good with a bee on a purple flower on the cover. The vibrations stop for a moment. “Victor?” The shirt shifts below my forehead. “Max, electrochemical signals are failing to reach my feet, do you mind sitting up?” I remember twisting my head and, on catching sight of Sherlock’s face from a rather odd angle, looking down at me with his chin pressed against his neck, bursting into hysterical giggles. Sherlock, looking bemused, attempted to shift me off him while Dad grinned at us from where he leant against the doorframe. 

 

*

 

We park just down the road from the shop, by the edge of the town square. Already sights and smells are dragging memories back to the surface of my mind. It’s the news agents where I would collect every newspaper they had each morning so that sherlock could scan them for potential cases. Or the church Max thought must be a massive library and wanted to go into in order to ‘read about bees’ and where he shouted at the priest, ‘Where are the books?!” who handed him a copy of the bible which Sherlock may have allowed to digest in hydrochloric acid at one point. Our vintage Volkswagen campervan looks incredibly out of place among these conservative buildings, like a parrot among pigeons. 

 

We clamber into the back and collect the stuff we require for the night from where it is strewn over the beds and cram it into a bag. As I peer past the front seats to see if we’ve forgotten anything, I am struck by how little is left. We have a surprisingly small collection of possessions to show for six years of Max’s life. Mostly it’s just books, packed away under the beds and into the wooden chest I made for Max after reading him ‘Inkheart’. There’s clothes, sketchbooks, paintings - his and mine (several of Sherlock), manuscripts, Max’s BMX bike (wedged upside down between his bed and the wall) and a tangle of cables for various laptops, phones and iPods. The rest we left in the remnants of our own flat, under the arsonists homophobic slurs decorating the charred walls. 

 

The cobblestones are peppered with the occasional spot of rain. It’s still spitting slightly, although the sun casts long shadows across the street. I slow to a stop outside the only window I recognise in a block of new shop fronts. He hasn’t changed the name, despite constantly complaining about its ‘ridiculous sentimentality’ and having to fend off customers’ criticism of its morbidity. 

 

TURN BLOOD INTO INK

_-T.S.Eliot_

 

There is new varnish on the window frames and the ‘closed’ sign is no longer missing a corner, although the display still consists of a rather battered copy of hamlet and Sherlock’s ‘friend’s’ skull in front of a smashed mirror that may have reduced our business somewhat. 

 

Max drops his rucksack onto the narrow pavement and flops on top of it, replacing the earphone that fell out while he removed his bag. He gives me an odd look and I realise that I am alternating between analysing his behaviour and staring at the doorbell. It is a victorian bell pull attached by a wire to a large bell inside the living room upstairs. It used to have to be screwed back on more times than it was ever actually rung. 

 

I pull the bell and clutch the strap of my bag nervously. I suddenly, and weirdly for a father of a ten year old, feel very young. I was eighteen. Sherlock was twenty three. We were meant to spend the rest of our lives together, grow up with our son. Maybe we still can. 

 

I am surprised by the door not being impatiently wrenched open and for a moment I fear that Sherlock no longer impatiently wrenches doors open. Instead, it’s swung inwards on it’s hinges to reveal a short man in a woollen jumper who looks slightly confused, as if the doorbell has never been rung before. 

 

“Yes?”

 

I reign in the panic and try to ignore the increasing certainty that _Sherlock doesn’t live here anymore._ “Hello. Um. I’m sorry, I thought an old friend lived here.” He looks… relieved. 

 

“Oh. Er. I can see if we have details for the previous owners…” The man glances behind him, before looking back, his eyes narrowing slightly. “…Sorry, come in.”

 

“Thanks.” 

 

I know from the moment I see ‘The BBKA Guide to Beekeeping’ slotted between ‘Total Synthesis of Natural Products’ and the ‘Handbook of Chinese Medical Plants’ that Sherlock still lives here. As a result of some kind of muscle memory, Max winds into the warren of bookcases, heading straight for Sherlock’s favourite book on bees and immersing himself apicultural study. I gravitate towards the cluster of T.S.Eliot that I can still feel on my fingers from the day I unpacked and organised them. I’m startled by the man’s voice behind me. “My flatmate calls that ‘The Victor Section,’ - no idea why.” 

 

We divided the books between us. Fiction, poetry, art and philosophy went from boxes to the shelves on my side of the room, science, mathematics and history (for some bizarre reason) became alphabetised on Sherlock’s. We split the biographies on each side. He ended up with sport, although most of that section went missing within the first month - a mystery until I spotted a semi-burnt half of Chris Hoy’s face clinging to the ceiling of Sherlock’s lab. 

 

I reach out and run a finger over the cracked spines, tilting my head to look at the shelves reaching upwards and recognising each book by feel. Combined with the familiar creak of the wooden staircase, it’s like returning to the past. 

 

“Victor?” I have often wondered whether Sherlock Holmes’ voice has ever cracked on anyone else's name. I turn first. Then I lower my gaze so that it flows over the bannister to his face. 

 

He half dives down the last three steps and stumbles over a pile of antiquarians on the floor, ducking around the politics section. His eyes are lit with a fascination that appears as pathetic replications in my dreams. 

 

Then his hands are hot and large through my jumper, on my shoulders, gripping my waste as I burry my hands in his hair. His curls twist around my fingers as I press my face into his neck, the smell of chemicals not to be mixed and tobacco not to be smoked, books I read once, over his shoulder or out loud to the soundtrack of his violin. His pulse beats against my nose, his heart slightly to the left of my own as we slowly spin as if in a waltz. Each touch is a connection, the acknowledgement of _you are feeling this and I am controlling it,_ like the communication between receptor and effector. He breath feathers over my scalp and I shiver. I feel the silent chuckle reverberate through his chest. 

 

I make a half-hearted attempt to break away so Sherlock holds on tighter. “I’m never letting go.” _God,_ _I love you._

 

I press my smile into his warm skin. “Good luck with that.” As Sherlock shuffles us around, I catch the sight of two faces of varying shock. I murmur into Sherlock, “I think your flatmate is questioning reality.”

 

Sherlock shivers with laughter and slowly unfolds himself from around me. He scans me face for few seconds and then, keeping one hand pressed against my chest, clinging slightly to the fabric of my jumper, turning to his flatmate, and then past him, to Max.  

 

Max looks up, meets Sherlock’s eyes and says, “You’re not my father until you explain why.” before dropping his gaze back to the book and turning a page.

 

*

 

Bees are quite fascinating. They have a collective intelligence unaffected by the complications that sentient beings suffer from. They also exist, due to evolution, purely for the sake of the survival of their genetic investment in the queen’s offspring. The are selfless. Or, to be more accurate, they have no sense of self. 

 

There are several ways in which  my parents my dad and Sherlock differ from bees. The first is that they are both ridiculously sentimental, despite the impression of Sherlock I have gained from Victor’s accounts of his behaviour towards those outside of  our family Victor and I. 

 

The second is that they have each devoted at least three years to raising a child of no biological relation. On average, my legal guardians have given me four-point-five years of their lives. This suggests that some sentient beings are capable of a kind of enhanced altruism greater than humans’ societal moral obligations, also demonstrated in Dad’s veganism. 

 

The final difference between social insects and these particular humans is individuality. Neither of them conform to social convention, in isolation or in their relationship. 

 

I know that biologically, Sherlock owes me nothing. In the eyes of human society, what he did to our family would be seen as a betrayal. I don’t really care what a stranger would say about what happened (I barely know what happened), but I think that if you tell someone that you love them, you shouldn’t do anything without first considering their happiness, because lying is wrong… in some cases. 

 

*

 

We clear the bed in the in the attic. Max’s old room is filled by Sherlock’s lodger. He looks so small amongst the towering books. I sit cross legged on the bottom of his bed, reading a passage from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and censoring it as I go. An orange bulb sways slightly above Max’s head, giving out a slight glow but apart from that the room is in shadows, only a silvery light from the skylight to cast them. 

 

Marvin leads Arthur and Ford into the elevator and my eyelids keep drooping, so I glance at the page number and close the book. “Dad?”

 

“Mmm?”

 

“Is John Sherlock’s new boyfriend?”

 

I stare at him blankly. “What? Who’s John?”

 

“ _That man_.”

 

“Oh.” I haven’t considered this as a possibility. For what should have been eternity, it had been Sherlock-and-Victor within our group of acquaintances. The possibility that Sherlock does not require our relationship for his mental wellbeing confuses me. We feel the same. This was what made us compatible, even more than our intellect, while I analysed meanings and questions without answers and Sherlock was fascinated by cause and effect, we felt the same. _Prufrock._ “I don’t know.” _If he’s happy, if he’s really happy, then what does it matter?_

 

 

*

 

Sherlock’s _friend_ \- Victor Trevor - clambers down the step ladder, ducking at the right moment to avoid a skull and ceiling collision, something I always fail to do. 

 

“Yes, John, this is my fiancé.” 

 

“Fiancé?” I direct the question at Mr Trevor. Although I don’t know him, I am certain that he is more likely to give me a straight answer than Sherlock would. 

 

“Um… we didn’t like ‘boyfriend’, ‘partner’ was too vague and marriage is a patriarchal invention with no relevance in todays society, so Sherlock and I got engaged.” Trevor sits crossed legged on Sherlock’s chair and smiles wryly, “Also as a way to stick it too the idiots against gay marriage, without actually ‘tying the knot.’”  

 

I almost snort. “Of course you did.” 

 

He gives a slight jerk of his head, still smiling slightly, “Victor.”

 

“John Watson.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you, John Watson.” I get the sense that he’s mocking me. It is, surprisingly, not that irritating.

 

“Your son shares Sherlock’s fascination with bees.” 

 

His eyes twinkle. “I didn’t find out about the bee thing until we had Max, Sherlock deemed it more child friendly than… well, I banned beheadings.”

 

“Ridiculous. Exposure to visuals of dead human matter has no correlation with emotional trauma, VLT.” 

 

“Yeah, Sherlock, but he kept showing his friends.” Sherlock gives Victor a look and Victor smirks. “So, John. You and Sherlock solve crimes together?” 

 

“John’s my blogger.”

 

“Yeah. I was just meant to be renting the second bedroom, but, well…”

 

“Things escalated.”

 

“Um, yeah.” _Understatement of the century._

 

*

 

_Victor._

 

_28 (five years. How? My fault), underweight (oh, Victor, you hypocrite), runs… at six thirty every morning (in the Pentland Hills, too far away), slept last night in an undersized bed (that ridiculous campervan), changed shampoo to something french (No, he’s not allowed to change), last ate 18:52 (bread roll and an apple, ensuring Max ate - even allowing him to break his veganism), taken up the piano again (poor Maxwell)._

 

_Afraid, anxious (about Maxwell, who is never going to forgive me, is never going to be my son, will grow up without me, already has. All the things I wanted to teach him), happy (about me. Why? I am happy to see him, touch him, be with him, but Victor has Maxwell, confused (by John. Will they like each other? Victor likes everyone - but…)._

 

He called it love and I was confused, because love was something everyone else felt - Not me. Not Victor Trevor. I was also under the impression that it was something to be dramatically declared, not blurted out casually in the chaos of a crowd, halfway down the stairs from the lecture theatre. 

“I thought we’d go to that new thai place around the corner. Oh, and Bee? I love you.” 

 

John is staring at me. It’s the ‘I’m concerned because you are acting odd’ look. Idiot. Although, it might be the ‘There’s a crisis and you aren’t addressing it’ look. They are quite similar. 

 

I am irrationally overjoyed that Victor is here, that _Max_ is here. Irrational, considering the fact that, balance of probability, a warrant for John’s arrest will be being issued within forty-eight hours. I’ll let Max sleep, and then get them out of here. 

 

We’ll have to leave the country. There is no way that John could escape prison if it were to come to a court case. We’ll go abroad, maybe leave Europe if we have to. I don’t want my family mixed up in it, but I can’t leave them behind. _Sentiment is a defect found on the losing side._

 

The work is nothing if Victor and Max are not happy. I don’t care anymore. I need John safe, Victor by my side (God knows why that is a requirement for his happiness) and Max with a future and, ideally, with his parents. 

 

Now Victor is looking at me over a copy of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_. It is his ‘I love you but you’re not making sense, Bee’ look. Ah yes, lack of motion and response triggers alarm. 

 

“Victor, in about four hours, John will be added to a list of suspects at Scotland Yard. Due to the possibility of a improbable outcome where he is not implicated, we cannot leave yet and draw attention to ourselves. I am relying on the fact that DI Lestrade will warn us in advance and then we have to leave.” 

 

It takes a moment for Victor to process, and he stands there, scanning my face. “Where?” 

 

‘ _How hard do you find it, having to say ‘I don’t know’?’_ “I don’t know.”

 

*

 

“Alright,” Victor removes a bunch of keys from his pocket and hands them to Sherlock. “You had better put some essentials in the van.”

 

“I would understand completely if you wanted to take Max and go back to Edinburgh. The police are unlikely to recognise our association.”

 

Victor ignores him and glances around, bounding over to one of the bookcases and removing a volume. “We’ll take the Euro Tunnel and go East.”

 

*

 

Max glares out through the window, watching headlights streak past and kicking his heels repeatedly against his seat. It’s irritating, but I honestly have no idea what to do about it. Sherlock is being cryptic, John silent - understandable, given the circumstances - and I’m beginning to analyse the practicalities of this particular adventure. So much for domestic bliss in rural England. 

 

John and Sherlock have balanced themselves gingerly on either bed, surrounded by our luggage. They look incredibly uncomfortable and out of place, but it would be unfair to ask Max to offer John his seat. He’s huddled slightly next to me, his flannel pyjamas growing too small and his bare toes clawing at the blanket he’s bundled up in for warmth. He really should be asleep. It has gone midnight and his iPod is out of charge, tangled uselessly in the glove compartment. 

 

I hate driving at night, especially in the country. 

 

I turn on the radio. It helps cover the drone of passing cars, even if it’s halfway though a drama and I have no idea what’s going on. Eventually, I sense Max nodding off to the lull of a familiar Scottish accent. His neck is bent uncomfortably and his forehead is pressed against the glass and he is going to have cramp tomorrow, but this calm is better than the anger, irritation and general upset-ness that has been simmering behind his eyes since we returned.  

 

I know he’s lonely, and us moving hasn’t helped. Edinburgh wasn’t safe anymore and it’s not as if we could have stayed. It’s just that we’ve ended up running farther away than we expected. I am trusting Sherlock with our future. God help me. 

 

 

*

 

 

This is insane. I’m a suspect in a murder case, on the run with a stranger, his sullen and rather creepy son and a madman. In a hippie van. 

 

Trevor is the most dangerous variable out of all of them. If the last few months have taught me anything, it’s not to trust anyone. I know nothing of him, save that he is worthy of Sherlock Holmes - and therefore a genius, so he is entirely unpredictable. What kind of man endangers his son to help a potential criminal? I can’t even rely on traditional parental behaviours to determine his motives. Sherlock trusts Victor Trevor: is that reason for me to, too?

 

The kid has woken up. He’s reading out loud from a battered paperback, barely stumbling over the longer words.

 

‘ _Cold stone, a weight against warm back._

_Fingers tracing a snail’s track._

_Dancing flies on the window’s cracked pains_

_Watched it all disintegrate into flames,_

_That licked up at Adam’s skin_

_Tacked up there with a safety pin._

_And filling with the smell of rotting flesh,_

_As if He were some Venkatesh,_

_The room, slid under as it fell apart,_

_Watching its integration with the atoms of art._

 

_And I watched the seas collapse_

_Over someone important, perhaps,_

_Or no one of infinite value to nobody,_

_The animal genus_ gobiidae

_Smashed against the craggy rock._

_Not a single dove, but an entire biblical flock._

_A concrete transport truck_

_Summersaulted, the driver stuck._

_The end. The stop._

_A limb of life lopped off._

 

_They laid him out flat on the sand,_

_Almost complete - missing one hand._

_Lowered him into a box to rot,_

_Although he wanted to burn on an untethered yacht._

_Stuck a lump of granite over his head,_

_Which would have gone quickly, even if it weren’t dead._

_Eyes slid over to fall apart,_

_For other lovers, closer to the heart._

_No epitaph, no meaning to confront_

_Warm earth on a cold front._

 

_Had he known when the sun rose,_

_He might have risen with it, written a few lines of prose_

_About where he was going,_

_Thought about that which he was unknowing,_

_Seen the void, and, this time_

_Not feared my face, but used that word: ‘Sublime’._

_But he knelt before a cross each night,_

_Saw me in something behind his sight._

_But still he knew he had nothing to anticipate_

_When he watched the smoke clouds dissipate.’_

 

No one remarks on the morbid subject matter. In fact, after finishing, the boy meets my eye in the mirror. He might be smirking slightly. I wonder who taught him to be so sinister. “Who was that?” Trevor asks.

 

“Anon - _The Burning of the Sistine Chapel_.” Sherlock supplies.

 

Trevor turns, eyes comically wide. “You’ve been reading poetry.” 

 

Sherlock waits until his fiancé is looking out the windscreen again before acknowledging, “Indeed.”

 

“Blimey.”

 

*

 

I don’t like John Watson. I don’t like how Dad has given up our home for Sherlock to give up his for John. I don’t want to go to Europe. I can’t speak half the languages and we won’t find anything we can eat. This isn’t like those road trips every summer. We are on the run. From the law. With a murderer.

 

Dad pulls up in a lay-by just off the A1. The drone of the motorway pollutes the air enough for me to stifle a yawn. He notices and moves the map off his knees, the way to Dover marked out with a biro pen, staggering to his feet. “Sherlock, do you mind swapping with Max.” Silently, Sherlock moves off my bed and there’s an awkward moment when we pass each other on his way up the van. He tries to meet my eyes. I watch my feet shift past his and pull the blanket up from danger of being trodden on. I clamber into bed and pull the duvet tight around me, slipping my book into the space between the mattress and the wall. Watson stands too but I can hear Dad shift and slump down next to me. His back is warm against mine and I can sense his toes tangling with the sheets.

 

I drift off quickly.

 

 

*

 

 

I half-wake at the beginning of the dawn chorus. I haven’t slept anywhere other than a building since I was a child, wild camping up north with Harry and my dad. I shuffle over, something hard digging into my thigh. Looking up through bleary eyes, I see Sherlock’s silhouette, curled in the passengers seat against the blue glow on the horizon. The hard thing is my gun. I can feel the skin pressing against it redden. I slowly move my hand down, muscles still weak with sleep, and pull it out onto the sheet in front of me. As quietly as possible, I slide my upper body to the edge of the bed, pick up the gun and attempt to jam it under the mattress. It rests on the wooden frame with a thump and I relax my contorted body, glancing over at the opposite bed and meeting two large brown eyes.

 

My heart jumps even as I watch the kid’s eyes slide closed again, his face serene, fresh from REM sleep. He couldn’t have seen anything. He must have been asleep seconds ago. No one can wake that quickly. He wouldn’t have seen it. Why didn’t I check?

 

 

*

 

It’s that horrible time when you’re out in the world but it feels cold and alien, filling you with a queasiness that comes from being an alive, awake being, intruding on this early morning grey. The van is always freezing at night. It lacks the enclosed warmth of a tent that comes from the accumulation of sleeping bodies’ heat. Instead, the crisp air whispers between the window pains and chills their metal frames, so that, in winter, your breath condenses in the air above where you huddle under blankets or in a sleeping bag. 

 

The road is virtually empty. I feel more relaxed off the motorway, heading through smaller towns and passing obscure landmarks. 

 

Max is shivering next to me and I quell the parental instinct to pull him close and get him warm. The disconnecting between us is becoming more profound and I am desperately afraid of his loneliness. We need to settle somewhere so that he can make friends with people his own age, although it may already be too late. 

 

Where did his childhood go - those years that pass like centuries when they are the present but, for outsiders and in retrospect, are gone in moments? 

 

When I was growing up, I heard adults talk of their child’s safety and health almost obsessively, and it baffled me. My parents wanted me to be happy, and even though my father would grip my hand so hard it hurt as we skirted massive drops halfway between mountain summits, they were, thankfully, pretty relaxed. My mother used to say earnestly that the fact I never suffered from any illness worse than the common cold was down to the cluttered, dusty and, not filthy, but not exactly sterile, house we lived in. I was convinced that longterm exposure had left me immune to every pathogen nature could create. 

 

I created a wild existence for my small family not only because I instinctively hate the conventional, but because I wanted Max to learn that simply doing what has been done before is pointless. I think that this is why overprotectiveness destroys a child’s potential to be extraordinary. It is not enough to be safe and clean, one has to be happy.

 

Saying that, I’m not sure even my parental values justify going on the run with Max, my unstable fiancé and a potential murderer. 

 

I go with the flow. It’s what keeps me alive, but I’m not sure, with Max by my side, it’s going to work anymore. After a lifetime endeavouring to live only in the moment, I’m going to have to plan this very carefully, if Max isn’t to end up dead or in care. 

 

I’ve managed to avoid fucking up like this for twenty eight years. So long as it doesn’t happen again, we’ll be alright. 

 

John Watson isn’t a murderer. Sherlock would have warned me the moment I brought Max home. But we need to go far away from here, preferably without getting arrested in the process. 

 

_A concrete transport truck,_

_Somersaulted, the driver stuck._

 

*

 

Victor braked sharply as the vehicle in front swerved to avoid an animal streaking across the road. A single wheel skidded off the tarmac and then, as if in slow motion and with flash backs of ‘The Italian Job,’ the entire lorry began a massive roll, bouncing in the heather as it careered towards the river. 

 

In the resulting chaos, my battle instinct kicks in. And yet has no outlet - there is no one to protect. The lorry settles halfway down the gully on our right. There is nobody else around to see.

 

Trevor pulls the handbrake and silence falls. “Dad?” The kid sounds afraid, not indifferent, for once. 

 

“Pass my phone, Max.” 

 

“No.” Sherlock stands up, “Victor, we can’t get involved with the police.”

 

Max avoids Sherlock’s eye as he hands his father the phone. “Sherlock, there is a man down there who may be in need of emergency medical assistance. I am not going to let him die.”

 

“Victor.” They stare at each other for too many moments. “You can’t.” Trevor’s eyes narrow, before, slowly and deliberately, he passes the mobile back to his son. 

 

“Dad?” Max questions as Trevor turns back towards the windscreen and restarts the engine. The kid watches out the window as the lorry vanishes around a bend and then, glancing at Trevor, brings the phone to his ear. 

 

“Ambulance…” Trevor doesn’t try to stop him. Sherlock has his face covered with a hand. “There’s been an accident… A21, near Flimwell, a lorry came off the side of the road about five minutes ago. No… I don’t know.” There’s a voice, loud and insistent through the static on the other side, before Max hangs up. 

 

 

 

*

 

I lie under the slats of Max’s bed, staring up at the bottom of the mattress in the dark. I can feel books digging into my back. _War and Peace, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Arabian Nights, Higher Maths in Action -_ I can recognise them by the width of their spines against my skin. 

 

Sound is muffled under here. I can hear Victor and Max talking, both imitating normal, relaxed father-son conversation for the sake of the other’s in the queue of vehicles waiting to enter the tunnel and the officials, checking passports and halfheartedly questioning the drivers. I can almost imagine it, the life all these people assume they have: Victor the husband of a nice woman with other kids at home, taking his son to see Europe. 

 

I saw, when Victor replaced the planks one by one over me, Max’s torchlit pencil drawings from hours hidden under here, angry with his father, perhaps, or trying to escape the freezing cold in this bloody baltic campervan. There’s a polar bear with wonky eyes, a curled dragon repeated several times over with varying success, a poem, of which I read the first word - ‘ _Before’._ Then he lifted the mattress over, plunging me into darkness. 

 

John lies under the other bed, and I wonder which books he lies upon. All those years ago, it would have been volumes of poetry, the works of T.S.Eliot, Kazuo Ishiguro and Douglas Adams jumbled together and a bazaar collection of biographies and textbooks. I can imagine its current state - an asylum of self help and parenting volumes, perhaps diluted by the Bible or the Tripitaka and the diluted musings of various philosophers. 

 

I feel the engine shudder to life and I know we’re through, at least until the other side. 

 

 

_Twentieth of July, 2015_

 

I am beginning to hate border controls with a passion. I hate lying on principle and I hate the guilt that comes from doing it in front of Max. I don’t want him to grow up thinking that this is alright. 

 

We’re in Norway now, heading north, although I’m not sure if there are many more countries we can go through. At least I know these places we pass, although not without a heavy covering of snow. It’s bringing back memories that seem ridiculously long ago. 

 

We came here one christmas. I wanted to show this amazingly empty and silent world that filled the holidays of my university days. I booked ski lessons for Max online and packed my nordic skis, hoping to teach him both disciplines at once. He hated cross country and spent more time lying face down in slush, yelling at me than sliding along in the tracks. He took to alpine skiing far more enthusiastically, and excelled in the small group of six year olds that formed his group. We didn’t get to escape up into the high mountains, away from the other tourists, as I’d wanted, which is probably why we’ve never gone back. 

 

John’s walking down into the village to find a supermarket. We’re parked beside a river, The 'Magnus Strom', clothes laid out in the sun on the roof of the van. It’s the first time we’ve managed to wash anywhere but a grimy public toilet block. It was mid day when Max spotted the car park and we pulled up, hungry and too hot after days of driving. He ran towards the water, flinging himself in fully clothed. Now, he sits on a rock in the middle of the river in his underpants. I should yell at him to put suncream on, but he’s so tanned now that I doubt his, once deathly pale skin, will suffer much. 

 

It’s weird, after almost a week of the four of us crammed together in the van, for it to just be Sherlock and I, lying side by side on the grassy bank. He’s run out of clothes and, reluctantly, is spread out in my Smiths t-shirt and shorts. Max looks over at us, giggles and shouts at Sherlock over the bubble of the water, “You look ridiculous!”

 

“Whereas you are ever glamorous, _Wella_.” Sherlock retorts. Max preens, arching his back ironically and puffing out his chest. Their laughter mingles for a moment and then Max gets up, leaps from stone to stone to the opposite bank and, facing away from us, hops on one leg, rubbing the sole of his foot. Glittering particles of silt and water fall from his skin. Sherlock watches him and then turns back to me, looking slightly dazed, as if just woken from a dream. 

 

“You need to talk to him.” 

 

At my plea, Sherlock averts his eyes. “He doesn’t want me. Why would he?” At first I don’t know whether he speaks out loud or I’m reading his expression, so I hesitate. 

 

Maybe I leave the question hanging too long because, as I open my mouth to reply, he stands and walks back to the van. He pulls a towel off the wing mirror and dries his hair vigorously, bare feet baking in the sun. “Why wouldn’t he?” Sherlock stops moving but it looks more like he’s been distracted by something on the horizon rather that my voice. His hair looks like the freeze frame of an explosion. “Why would anyone choose me as a father when they could have a genius who is so much greater than that _as well_?” I know Sherlock so well that I don’t have to look to see his back stiffen. “Who can pass on his wisdom, his enthusiasm, his bravery, his _love_ and his overwhelming stubbornness? Who is _the_ single most fascinating person to bless this forsaken rock?” Sherlock takes the hand I offer him and settles with his knees tucked up like a child’s, his back against my side. He doesn't have to say, ‘I wasn’t fishing for complements.’ - It’s implied in his eyes when he glares down at me. I reach up and trace a finger along the side of his face, scrunching up my nose, “You’ve gone wrinkly.”

 

“Sadly, my endeavours to discover The Fountain of Youth were thwarted during your absence.” He replies dryly. 

 

There’s the crunch of footfalls on gravel and John’s voice, “I have ice cream. It’s melting all over me, so you’d better hurry up and eat some.” 

 

We smile in what Sherlock would call, if he were to notice, ‘The Sickeningly Sentimental Parental Synchronisation,’ and others call ‘Fondness,’ as we watch Max impatiently tapping his foot as John opens the box, asking nervously if Pistachio is alright, because that’s all they had. 

 

I hope that Max considers this a happy childhood, when he’s out there, in that terrifying void that is the future. I hope that the bitterness doesn’t fester and that he’ll reach a resolution, the landmass to save him from drowning in nostalgia, as I did. I hope he’ll remember these moments where he could be a child in the moment without longing for them to be eternal. 

 

_For this is what we never got, us broken child’s toys_

 

_And there are moments where I play french songs,_

_Where I turn up the sound to drown out the_

_child’s tears._

_It’s not nostalgia,_

_Or maybe it is…_

_For things that were meant to happen:_

_The purpose that was meant to become clear._

 

_There are days where I grieve for essentialism,_

_Weeping for that eternal journey, passed in adult minutes -_

_child’s years._

_It’s not depression._

_But maybe it is,_

_Feelings that continue without context_

_In this adult world that they say I live now._

 

_There are years where I wonder when I will wake up,_

_Curled on the bottom bunk, afraid to face the wall of_

_child’s fears._

_It’s not terror,_

_Or maybe it is:_

_Fearfulness that these french songs_

_Don’t say anything._

 

_Or that they do and I’m the only one_

_who will never understand._

 

*

 

John waits until I’m distracted, reading over Victor’s shoulder but paying more attention to the way his hair tickles my face. 

 

And then there’s a clatter and a scream and, when we turn, there is green melted ice-cream oozing from a card board box and into the scrubby grass and the metal of a gun glints in the sunlight, pressed against Maxwell’s head. “Don’t move.” 

 

Wella is crying silent tears and Victor’s shaking against my side. “What-” Victor brakes off, with not enough breath, so I complete the question for him. 

 

“What do you want?”

 

*

 

“The keys.” Watson’s voice rumbles behind me. I hate not being able to see him. In fact, he could almost not be there if it were not for the cold hard gun pressed to my temple. I keep imagining myself somewhere this isn’t happening, believing it, and then remembering. 

 

Dad throws him the van keys, but they fall about half a meter short. 

 

 

*

 

The kid’s intelligent and doesn’t struggle, which if for the best: I don’t think I could shoot another human being. I have to admit, I’m disappointed in Sherlock Holmes. Far from completing him, Trevor weakens this genius, who is far too fragile to handle his intellect. 

 

It’s unfortunate that Victor Trevor can’t throw, because it’s hard to bend down when you’ve got a loaded unto someones head without pulling the trigger. I almost manage it. In fact, I’m leaning forward when I panic, feeling my fingers too tight around the metal and I let go. It wouldn’t matter so much if this weren’t Sherlock’s son, but suddenly I’m falling backwards.

 

I scrabble for balance, for the gun, and then look up and find it, pointing at my head. I reach out desperately for the keys - my final weapon - but the kid kicks them away. 

 

I hear Victor Trevor’s voice, out of sight behind the boy, “It’s alright Sherlock, I’ll think he’ll be okay.” And I think how mixed up I must be to hear that name in this context and then Sherlock steps around his son, takes the gun from his loose fingers and I wonder whether I could have swapped this terminated freedom for a longer jail sentence. And would I have, had I known?

 

 

_Twentieth of July, 2016_

 

I recognise the date without registering it until halfway through the day, with a sudden memory of the calendar in the van, reading ‘7.20.15’ - the American way, which is why I remember. I stare into the distance for a few seconds before shrugging slightly in my head and turning back to the reassuring words of my son’s latest literary masterpiece. 

 

*

 

When I come through the door, I blink, my eyes adjusting to the darkness of the bookshop in contrast to the bright sunlight outside. Dad’s face forms itself from the shadows. He is curled up in the poetry section, reading what I know from the typeface to be the first draft of my novel. He looks up, eyes twinkling, with that peculiar smile and I grin back. 

 

I leave my school bag on the stool by the apiculture shelf and ascend the stairs. 

 

*

 

_Max._

_11(How?), had triple english today, answered sixteen - no, seventeen of the teacher’s questions, more from his friends (He’s cleverer than me), stayed twenty six minutes late in the art department (helping that blond haired friend he goes on about), played rounders in physical education (and won, obviously), ate Victor’s soup at lunch (that makes one of us)._

 

_Happy (Familial stability, growing number of acquaintances and ‘friends’. Ah - Spoke to someone new today, someone significant. Need more data. Proud - The novel which I’ll pretend not to have read until he asks me to. Excited - About our experiment, I hope, and not only the typewriter he found in an antiques shop which is waiting, and rusting, upstairs on his bed. Happy - Because we are happy too?)_

 

“Alright, dad?” He smiles in that way that makes him look like a cheeky five year old again. 

 

“Mmm.” I let him wait, then look up and, leaping to my feet with the flourish Victor calls ‘Drama’, I wrestle him into a hug, overjoyed that, even if he struggles and protests through his laughter, I can do this now. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke, the film 'Zaytoun' and the trend for making Victor evil and John a saint. It was meant to be longer, but I lost the will to live. 
> 
> Maxwell is derived from the shortened form of the Scandinavian name Magnus, Mack, and old english 'wella' meaning stream, it means 'Mack's stream.'


End file.
